Developer wants new traffic light on Hwy. 54 West

A Tuesday night meeting at Peachtree City City Hall practically turned into a pro-big box lovefest.

Several residents from the Cardiff Park and Planterra Ridge neighborhoods spoke in favor of the City Council waiving its big box rules, which cap store sizes at 32,000 square feet, for a proposed 89,000 square-foot Kohl’s Department Store south of Ga. Highway 54 at Line Creek Drive.

Developer Doug McMurrain is asking the city to either sell or trade him the current city streets on the parcel: Line Creek Drive and Line Creek Court, which the council is under no obligation to do. But if those streets remain, there will not be enough room for the Kohl’s and thus the development won’t look as nice as it can, McMurrain said.

McMurrain, for his part, is pledging to make the shopping center look like The Avenue with decorative pavers, fountains and several outdoor courtyards. There will also be an outdoor music system similar to The Avenue’s.

But McMurrain’s Central Park will have one dominant feature that The Avenue doesn’t have: an 89,000 square foot building. The largest building in The Avenue is less than 20,000 square feet: the Books-A-Million, according to City Planner David Rast.

Capital City will also be looking to erect a stoplight on Ga. Highway 54 and Line Creek Drive, which is in-between Huddleston Road and MacDuff Parkway.

McMurrain has been working with residents of the adjacent Cardiff Park and Planterra Ridge subdivision for about a year to hammer out details and get their approval on the development before taking it to the City Council. He admitted to drawing a site plan a few months ago that left the current streets and showed a few stores that might not be well received by Peachtree City residents, including a Hooter’s restaurant, a Quik Trip convenience store and a Pep Boys auto parts store.

While the neighbors’ support could at least be chalked up in part to that tactic from McMurrain, several residents lauded him for making concessions on the development, such as a pledge to add landscaping, berms and screening walls along the rear of the property which borders Cardiff Park. McMurrain has also committed to beefing up the landscaping at the entrance to Planterra Ridge along Ga. Highway 54 and to limiting truck traffic at the shopping center to between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.

McMurrain said Kohl’s has committed to designing a store with fake facades in an effort to make the building look nicer.

Although Mayor Harold Logsdon and Councilman Steve Boone said they favor the Kohl’s proposal from McMurrain, council members Stuart Kourajian and Cyndi Plunkett were against it, and new councilman Mike Harman was undecided.

The plan will be considered by the planning commission during a workshop format at its meeting Monday night at 7 p.m.

Plunkett said that many citizens don’t want regional shopping centers located in Peachtree City. She also noted that the land has been zoned commercial, so neighbors should have been aware of the potential for development on that site.

Boone said he thought the Kohl’s plan would allow for the architecture of the shopping center to be nicer, but Kourajian noted that there is already an existing architectural overlay for the site that requires the shopping center to look like the one across Ga. Highway 54: McIntosh Village.

Harman said he agreed with Plunkett that the city should get more input from residents in other areas of the city before making a decision on the big box issue. Paul Van’t Hof, president of the Peachtree City Civic Association — a group of homeowner’s association presidents — said the civic association membership is divided on the issue of whether or not the Kohl’s proposal is a good idea.

Council agreed by consensus to allow city staff to explore the idea of selling the streets to Capital City or swapping land of equal or greater value to allow the company to acquire the streets.

McMurrain said he spent $500,000 in legal bills fighting the city on the Wal-Mart and Home Depot developments, and he wants to avoid going that route for this property. In fact, if the city doesn’t either sell or trade with Capital City for the road, McMurrain said he could easily sell the property to another commercial developer.

“But I don’t want to do that because it’s not the right thing to do for Peachtree City,” McMurrain said.

Logsdon agreed: “Plan B is not a plan that will look good in Peachtree City.”

Kourajian said he worried that granting a special use permit for a big box store might make it easier for large stores to be built in other areas of the city. City Attorney Ted Meeker said while other stores could make that legal argument, he didn’t think the granting of a special use permit would create a situation that would force the city to grant those permits to all future developers seeking to build large stores.

Boone said he also supported the plan because it would improve sales tax revenue “that we dearly need in our coffers.”

McMurrain even had two current planning commissioners in his corner, including Marty Mullin, who is an architect, and Patrick Staples, who lives in Cardiff Park.

Staples said the plan had facets the city looks for in quality developments including greenspace, buffers, accommodations for pedestrian traffic and family-centered activities.

Mullin said the challenge will be communicating the matter to citizens.

“Doug has been willing to step up to the plate,” Mullin said.

Beth Pullias, president of the Kedron Hills Community Association, said talking with her neighbors, roughly 90 percent of them don’t want a big box store in Peachtree City.